Spotlight: A Weekly Artwork Selection
Ryan Gander – Y gêm (My neotonic contribution to Modernism), 2017
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| Photos © Andrea Rossetti | |
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Ryan Gander
Y gêm (My neotonic contribution to Modernism), 2017
Wood, polystyrene, artificial fur balls
118 x 75 x 60 cm |
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Y gêm (My neotonic contribution to Modernism) takes as point of departure a 1918 abstract sculpture by the Belgian Modernist artist George Vantongerloo (b. 1886, Antwerp; d. 1965, Paris). Vantongerloo, who was greatly influenced by his encounter with the Dutch De Stijl movement, pursued his interest in geometrical relationships and algebraic formulas beginning in 1918. Another art historical reference are Pop artist Claes Oldenburg's "soft sculptures" from the early 1960s.
Ryan Gander short-circuits this development by first treating the older master's hard-edged sculpture with a computer program that enlarges the work and rounds angular shapes, before covering it in a thick layer of orange artificial fur balls, transforming the sculpture into a soft, fuzzy and inflated-looking form. |
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| Photos © Andrea Rossetti
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The work epitomizes Gander's interest in the legacy of modernism. In this context the artist has spoken of "soft modernism"—a merely stylistic championing of modernist aesthetics that dilutes its progressive potential. Posing the idea of a hard, abstract idea of modernist sculpture against the soft, fluffy, comic suppleness of the orange fur balls playfully addresses the artist's ongoing engagement with modernist ideas and their potential for alternative histories.
The artwork can be shown alone, or alongside a seated gallery invigilator wearing a body stocking covered in the same fur balls, within the vicinity of the sculpture, shown at the discretion of the owner/exhibitors.
Gander first began to reference the work of Vantongerloo in 2011.
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| Ryan Gander, 게임 (My neotonic contribution to Modernism), 2017, artificial fur balls, 252 x 130 x 105 cm, 80 x 120 x 120 cm (plinth).
Photo © Gallery Hyundai
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Ryan Gander
Am I naked too?, 2011
Architectural intervention, 31,7 x 25 cm
An aperture cut into an interior or exterior wall, door or window glazing, the aperture being the exact shape and dimensions of a sculpture by Georges Vantongerloo entitled "Construction of Volumetric Interrelationships Derived from the Inscribed Square and the Square Circumscribed by a Circle," 1924, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Exhibition view: New Collisions in Culturefield, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, 2011
Photo © Jens Ziehe |
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Ryan Gander
La Joute (My Neotonic Ovoid Contribution to Modernism), 2016
Steel, foam, artificial fur balls, resin
215 x 145 x 110 cm
An enlarged and inflated version of George Vantongerloo's "Komposition Aus Dem Ovoid" covered in multicolored artificial fur balls.
Exhibition view: Heterotopias. Avant-gardes in Contemporary Art, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Aubette 1928, Strasbourg, 2016
Photo © Mathieu Bertola |
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Online Tour – Natural and Conventional Signs
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Natural and Conventional Signs is an exhibition in which Ryan Gander presents a selection of new works directly guided by his research at Princeton undertaken during his time as a Hodder Fellow (2019-2020) and made during a period of reflection while the world paused amid a global pandemic. Gander invites an audience into his studio-cum-gallery, Solid Haus in rural Suffolk, a two-hour drive east of London, digitally for the first time. There he has assembled a show in which the works have duality in meaning and utility; subverting the signs, tropes, and markers seen in the everyday world to shine new light on how we position ourselves in relation to the values of time, money, opportunity, attention and privilege. This recorded tour of the exhibition will be available to view until February 26. Natural and Conventional SignsLewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University (online) February 5 – 26, 2021 www.arts.princeton.edu
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Ryan Gander (b. 1976 in Chester) lives and works between Suffolk and London.
Gander’s œuvre evokes fictional spaces, institutions and figures. His work is extremely varied, unified more by a conceptual vision than by formal appearance. It often combines fictional presence and absences, creating objects that refer to events, other absent objects, art works or persons, both real and imaginary.
Recent solo exhibitions include: Natural and Conventional Signs, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University (online), (2021); Nick Lodgers invites Ryan Gander, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2020); The 500 Million Year Collaboration, Kunsthalle Bern (2019); Good Heart, Base / Progetti per l'arte, Florence (2018); The day to day accumulation of hope, failure, and ecstasy, Laguna Gloria, The Contemporary Austin, Austin (2017); Faces of Picasso: The collection selected by Ryan Gander, Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2017); These wings aren’t for flying, The National Museum of Art, Osaka (2017).
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Ryan Gander reads I Am for an Art by Claes Oldenburg (1961) to his two daughters, Penny and Olive. |
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Ryan Gander
Soft Modernism
2017
Publisher: Gallery Hyundai
English/Korean
Available here
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Ryan Gander
Artists’ Cocktails (3rd Edition)
2015
Publisher: Dent-De-Leone
English
Available here
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